Physicists and science buffs are all aquiver concerning the discovery of the so-called God particle. The actual scientific name of this allegedly original of all subatomic particles or bosons is the Higgs Boson. It is named for an elementary particle within the Standard Model of particle physics. The person most commonly associated with this subatomic particle is the man who originally theorized its existence almost 50 years ago, British physicist Peter Higgs. Higgs and others originally published a series of papers in the 1960’s postulating what has come to be known as the Higgs mechanism. In particle physics, the Higgs mechanism (also called the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism, Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble mechanism (Kibble, 2012) and Anderson–Higgs mechanism) is the process that gives mass to elementary particles, (Wikipedia, 2012). It belongs to the category of physics associated with quantum mechanics.

If particle physics seems mystical to the layperson, it is because they are examining how, in the standard model, at temperatures high enough so that electroweak symmetry is unbroken, all elementary particles are massless. At a critical temperature, the Higgs field becomes tachyonic (hypothetical particles that are moving faster than the speed of light), the symmetry is spontaneously broken by condensation, and the W and Z bosons acquire masses. EWSB, ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking, is an abbreviation used to describe this event (Wikipedia, 2012). These changes are taking place at the subatomic level. They are beyond our abilities to observe them with our five senses.

When science attempts to study how the universe operates, it is on solid ground. It can be summarized in a sentence attributed to the brilliant mathematician, astronomer and creationist, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). He is credited with coining the phrase that describes all scientific endeavors as, “Thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” When science leaves God and His Word out of the equation, they inevitably end up promoting error. The fault of modern physicists such as Higgs can be seen as twofold. First, they base everything they know on a false premise, e.g. the Big Bang, and secondly, they often announce these discoveries in grandiose ways that would make even the most enthusiastic advertising executive green with envy.

The Big Bang is the most popular version of evolutionary cosmology. It is currently seen as the best naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe. It states that matter, energy and space were all compressed into an area many billions of times smaller than a proton (another subatomic particle) and then exploded for some undetermined reason to create an expanding universe which continues to spread today.

There are presently many models proposed by cosmologists to explain the Big Bang/Inflation theory, all of which are nothing more than mathematical constructs. Why so many theories of inflation? It is apparent that the verdict about what really took place is still out. Evolutionary cosmologists might protest that the event known as the Big Bang itself is not in question, only the details of how it happened need to be more clearly understood. You might say that, but as we have seen with evolution’s version of the origin of the universe, the devil is always in the details.

The history of scientific inquiry has shown us that a scientific consensus does not mean those scientists were correct. There was once a scientific consensus that bad air caused disease, e.g. the Miasma theory. It was later replaced by the Germ theory, but not before those postulating a microbial source for disease were ridiculed and ostracized by those of the preceding scientific consensus. When Darwin postulated his theory, science thought that cells were very simple in structure and function. As scientific investigation continued and the art of microscopy progressed, science had to rethink that premise.

Today, there are many well-credentialed men and women of science who agree that the validity of Darwinian Theory should be challenged. They have echoed legitimate questions that Bible believers have been voicing about the irreducible complexity of biological systems for generations. They point out that the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution thought sufficient to create new life forms, e.g. natural selection and beneficial mutation, are incapable of creating the new information required to produce new and ever more complex organisms (Discovery Institute, 2012). Lord Kelvin (William Thompson) (1824-1907), British physicist and the father of thermodynamics is credited with 70 inventions, the Kelvin temperature scale, and the first successful transatlantic cable gave his opinion of atheistic evolution stating, “Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us. . .the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.”

While it is the nature of scientific inquiry to be able to correct or even discard entirely older theories, making progress in our attempts “to think God’s thoughts after Him,” we should not become high-minded and prideful in our search for knowledge. When physicists who are admittedly hostile to the biblical worldview want to use God to hype their discoveries, those who trust in the Creator and honor His Word should be skeptical of their behavior. We should examine carefully what is being announced and speak the truth concerning it. Remember, even if men can build particle accelerators and prove the existence of these subatomic particles predicted in quantum theory, it will be evidence of Intelligent Design or creationism and nothing more.

Cosmologists tell us the earliest moment in time, named the Planck epoch for the father of quantum theory, Max Planck, is supposed to explain where the universe came from and how it came to be in its present state. Even though this “just so” story is based entirely on mathematical calculations and numbers so staggering, i.e. 10-43, that I understand why cosmologists postulate incredible density and temperature were involved. It is the same reason that billions of years are required for us to swallow the premise of biological evolution, e.g. given enough time, and anything is possible. Then we can believe that molecules can morph themselves into men as well as every other living organism on the planet. With the Big Bang, we have a variation on the same theme. Given enough pressure and temperature, we can have a Big Bang beginning for the expanding universe that continues to spread at an incredible rate of speed that has come to be known as the Hubble Constant.

It appears that the Universe is expanding at 80 km/sec/Mpc (statistical error = 17 km/sec/Mpc), as calculated by the Hubble Space Telescope's Key Project team (Mpc is megaparsec = 3.26 million light years). What this means is that objects will, on the average, be moving away from us at 80 km/sec for every megaparsec it is away from us. So another galaxy that is 1 Mpc away will be moving away from us at about 80 km/sec, and one that is 10 Mpc away will be moving at about 800 km/sec (Barbier & Christian, 2012). The common unit of velocity used to measure the speed of a galaxy is km/sec, while the most common unit of for measuring the distance to nearby galaxies is called the Megaparsec (Mpc) which is equal to 3.26 million light years or 30,800,000,000,000,000, 000 km! Thus the units of the Hubble constant are (km/sec)/Mpc (NASA, 2012).

While the Big Bang does not really infer an explosion, it does hypothesize a time when all matter in the universe was condensed into one very hot and extremely dense state called singularity. Then, suddenly and rapidly this matter began to expand allegedly 13.75 billion years ago (Komatsu, E. et al., 2009; Menegoni, et al., 2009). The Big Bang theory says, after its initial expansion from a singularity, the Universe cooled sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons The first element produced was hydrogen, along with traces of helium and lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements would coalesce through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements would be synthesized either within stars or during supernovae (Wikipedia, 2012). This is the theory of chemical evolution. While the players may change, e.g. inorganic molecules for chemical evolution rather than organic molecules for biological evolution, the underlying story remains the same.

It is ironic that the Big Bang Theory was first introduced by Belgium priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain, Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (1894-1966). He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble (Livio, 2011; Reich, 2011). Lemaître described this as his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom,’ and likened it to “the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation;” that became better known as the “Big Bang theory,” a term pejoratively coined by Fred Hoyle (Wikipedia, 2012).

While the rest of the evolutionary community has decided against the testimony recorded in the book of Genesis, there was only one eyewitness account of what actually took place, in the beginning, Gen. 1:1. When you reject the truth, you are left with a lie. By rejecting the truth of God’s Word, secularists embraced the Big Bang theory. Even though some have tried to squeeze the Big Bang scenario into a religious framework such as Georges Lemaître, find it is neither compatible with the actual evidence in the universe we see around us nor the accounts recorded in the Bible pertaining to the creation of all things seen and unseen. All such hypothetical constructs pertaining to the evolutionary process are based upon very little empirical evidence mixed together with a purely materialistic, atheistic worldview of origins.

Even if the Big Bang scenario were true, what power source could possible force all of the matter in the universe into an infinitesimally small subatomic particle, heating it to staggering numbers so high that new categories have been developed to describe their enormity. Evolutionary cosmologists are postulating extremely high temperatures so they tend to use gigaelectron volts (GeV) instead of degrees Kelvin to describe them. One GeV is equivalent to about 10,000,000,000,000K (Cambridge Cosmology, 2012). Water boils at 373.15K and our sun is 5-6,000K, so we can see that this temperature is well beyond anything naturally occurring anywhere in the known universe today. When physicists talk about the heat generated in the first couple of seconds of the Big Bang, they are talking about 1019 GeV. That is one GeV = 10 trillion degrees K and the heat generated by what has come to be known as the Planck epoch is the number 10 with nineteen zeros following or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 100 quintillion degrees Kelvin.

If the foundation of evolutionary theory, that somehow matter came into existence in the far distant past, underwent an expansion called the Big Bang, and then proceeded to form everything in the known universe, whether living or not is flawed, then all that is based upon that premise is likewise erroneous. Even though the Big Bang violates several well-established laws of physics with regard to thermodynamics, it does not deter these evolutionary scientists from proclaiming the Big Bang rather than the biblical account as the true history of the universe. Like their counterparts in the biological sciences, rejection of the Word of God leads to error. This is a biblical truth that can be applied to every area of one’s life. Error leads to bondage, but the truth will set you free. If you reject God’s version of reality, you will inevitably end up entangled in a web of lies.

It is not the intention of this article to refute the hypothesis known as the Big Bang, even though those problems are myriad, i.e. the horizon problem, the flatness problem, dark energy, dark matter, magnetic monopoles, baryon asymmetry, globular cluster age (CSI, 2012; Marmet, 1990). It is the goal of this article to question the presentation of the discovery of the so-called God particle as having any more scientific merit than evidence in favor of any of the subatomic particles such as quarks, leptons, or bosons, that are believed to exist in the known universe.

The reason that the God particle lends itself to such high levels of hyperbole can be traced to the part it is alleged to have played in Big Bang cosmology. This elusive particle solves the problem of how matter gains mass in the minds of cosmologists. In the same way that so-called transitional organisms are used to support Darwin’s theory of molecules-to-men, validation of the Higgs boson is being promoted as nothing less than the holy grail of subatomic particles (Krauss, 2012). What the Higgs boson might be is validation that God has intelligently designed and fine-tuned the subatomic world to allow life on planet earth to survive and thrive. Creationists value discoveries of science that explain how God has designed the universe and all that is contained therein.

At best, scientific inquiry is an attempt to discover how things work in God’s created natural world. Thinking God’s thoughts after Him is a noble effort to explain the wonders of God’s creation. Those who subscribe to Darwin’s theory are blinded by the deception, brainwashing and censorship employed by purveyors of this paradigm to indoctrinate students in our public schools and institutions of higher education. When creationists raise their voices in protest concerning inappropriately characterized discoveries, evolutionists are the first to call for our views to be censored. But when they deem it advantageous to use God to generate interest in their discovery, they will use Him to do it. It matters little that God views these self-promoting materialists as nothing more than educated fools. That is exactly how the Apostle Paul described those who reject the Creator in his letter to the body of believers in Rome nearly two thousand years ago:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became foolsProfessing to be wise, they became fools,and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things, Rom. 1:18-23.

In the realm of scientific inquiry, time is often the enemy of atheistic evolution and a friend of biblical creationism. As the list of so-called vestigial organs shrinks from more than 100 to a handful of hotly contested examples, (Safarti, 2008; Rowitt, 2011), we can see that assumptions held by evolutionists cannot stand the test of time. Darwin and his contemporaries were certain that time would provide the transitional fossils that would fill the gaps that were clearly evident in the 19th century. 150 years later, the gaps in the fossil record between every major life form remain unfilled. In fact, every living organism appears abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, just as the Creation model predicts. Genesis tells us that every living organism reproduces according to its own kind. Today we understand that the Creator has pre-programmed living organism using their DNA to insure viable reproductions enabling them to fulfill the divine command to be fruitful and multiply. That is what we see in the history of life as revealed in the fossil record, and that is what we observe in the world around us.

The more science looks outward using high-powered telescopes to see further and further towards the edges of the universe, the greater the majesty of God and His creation is established. Interestingly, the converse is also true. The more that science peers into the microscopic world and beyond into the subatomic particles that form all that is seen and unseen, it becomes clear that science cannot answer the “who” questions concerning origins and they are uncertain about the “what” and “how” questions as well. Whether it is the irreducibly complexity of even the simplest of all organic life forms or the use of particle accelerators to peer into the mysteries of quantum physics, there is one irrefutable truth that clearly and constantly resounds, in the beginning God!

Discovery Institute (2012). Discovery Institute is an inter-disciplinary community of scholars and policy advocates dedicated to the reinvigoration of traditional Western principles and institutions and the worldview from which they issued. Discovery Institute has a special concern for the role that science and technology play in our culture and how they can advance free markets, illuminate public policy and support the theistic foundations of the West.